Savage Recruit (Ryan Savage Thriller Series Book 8), стр. 9
There had indeed been a conspiracy targeting a high-level American. As it turned out, that target just happened to be the very man who sent me to investigate the claim in the first place, Jonathan Watts. A powerful Rio businessman was out for revenge after his wife had been killed in a local raid spearheaded by Homeland Security. In a move that was still being investigated, Augusto Santillo had gotten a glimpse into Watts’s travel itinerary, and when Watts arrived in Rio for a meeting at Brazil’s Ministry of Justice, Santillo’s pinchers closed down on his short motorcade, ambushing it just north of downtown.
Amid brass casings pinging the pavement, RPGs detonating, and depraved hitmen looking for blood, I managed to get Watts out of harm's way before paying Augusto Santillo an unexpected visit at his high-rise office downtown.
I had hardly returned home to Key Largo and started on my first beer when my phone rang. It was Jonathan Watts. Answering that call would have me leaving my favorite watering hole and taking off on a private jet to Greece within the hour.
My boss, Kathleen Rose, reported directly to Deputy Director Watts. After deciding to take her first real vacation in years, Kathleen had flown to southeastern Europe and stepped aboard a cruise that, over the next two weeks, took her across the Mediterranean with stops in Athens, Mykonos, Cyprus, and Catania. Prior to that, she had spent a week at a luxury hotel in Barcelona. Kathleen wasn’t married and didn't have a boyfriend. The only familial relationship she had outside of work was her foster daughter, Zoe Cross. Through a series of events associated with a previous investigation of mine, seventeen-year-old Zoe had been transferred out of the Louisiana state foster system and had come to live with Kathleen, who had welcomed the girl with open arms.
Other than daily photos and the occasional phone call to Zoe, Kathleen had taken her vacation completely unlike the workaholic that she was. During the entire time she’d been away, she had only called me twice and called into the office just three or four times. She seemed to be taking the whole concept of a vacation more seriously than anyone had anticipated.
While my feet were dangling off a dock over the saltwater and I was talking with my girlfriend, Charlotte, about the recent events down in Brazil, Watts had called to inform me that Kathleen had gone missing.
Her final calling port had been Port Piraeus in Athens, where her Seabourn cruise docked early yesterday morning and planned to cast off for open water again at 1800 hours. Kathleen had disembarked and then failed to return. The ship’s captain had to leave without her.
Cruise lines have to accommodate the frequent risk of passengers losing track of time and failing to return in a punctual manner. There are always stragglers. A small party may have had too much to drink and start making their way back to the boat without the proper enthusiasm. Somteimes guests get lost returning from an excursion or just simply loose track of time. And then others enjoy the thrill that comes with flirting with irresponsibility, arriving back at the last possible second. Cruise lines are on tight schedules for good reason. Leaving late from a port of call means they have to use more fuel to make up the time. More fuel means more money that they wouldn't have to spend otherwise. So they set a hard deadline for passengers to return. When that time expires, any guests who failed to return are left to find their own way to the next or final port of call.
Seabourn Cruises had notified Kathleen’s primary emergency contact of her failure to board in Athens. Because of her elevated position in a federal executive agency, and because her work entailed bringing down some of the most ruthless drug cartels and terrorist networks in North and South America, Kathleen’s emergency contact was an agency administrator at Homeland’s headquarters in Washington D.C.
Headquarters tried calling her cell phone with no luck. They pinged her location. Her cell phone’s GPS was not issuing any signal. A hurried look into her recent texts and emails inferred no prior plans to remain in Athens. Her belongings were still in her cabin; nothing appeared to be missing. She had simply vanished. Gone without a trace.
Now, sixteen hours later, there was still no sign of her. What everyone had initially hoped was just a misunderstanding of some kind was now being treated as an aggressive, nonvolitional disappearance—murder or kidnapping.
Things were already moving. CIA assets in the region had been put on alert, and Army Special Forces had deployed out of Fort Bragg and were on standby in the event that Kathleen was located and required a covert and clandestine rescue.
Lieutenant Ambrosia exited the highway and turned onto the main road that led to the military installation. Tall, slender firs lined both sides of the street. Ambrosia brought the Iveco to an abrupt stop in front of a yellow concrete barricade. An armed enlisted soldier stepped out of the guard post and checked Ambrosia’s credentials before waving us around the barricade.
The base’s buildings, like most military installations around the world, were an eclectic mix of old and modern architecture, the more recent administrative buildings and barracks a testament to the military’s more recent expansion. After driving deep into the base and passing a motor pool and a well-groomed parade field, Ambrosia pulled to the curb in front of a large, three-story neoclassical building. Its white columns and marble walls gleamed in the bright sunlight. A flagpole displayed the blue and white striped flag of Greece, and another held the white compass of NATO.
“If you don’t have anything in your baggage that you would like to keep close,” Ambrosia said, “then I will ensure it is placed in a room we